This palm tree is one of the finest objects in nature.  Its stem is tall and slender, without a branch; and at the top are seen from ten to two hundred coco-nuts, each as large as a man’s head:  over these are the graceful plumes, with their green gloss, and beautiful fronds of the nodding leaves.  Nothing can exceed the graceful majesty of these intertropical fruit trees, except the various useful purposes to which the tree, the leaf, and the nut are applied by the natives.

1.  The stem is used for—­Bridges, posts, beams, rafters, paling, ramparts, loop-holes, walking sticks, water butts, bags (the upper cuticle), sieves in use for arrowroot.

2.  The coco-nut is used for—­milk, a delicious drink; meat from the scraped nut, for various kinds of food; jelly, kora, pulp, nut, oil, excellent and various food for man, beast, and fowl.

The shell for vessels to drink out of, water pitchers, lamps, funnels, fuel, panga (for a game).

The fibre for sinnet, various cordage, bed stuffing, thread for tying combs, scrubbing-brushes, girdle (ornamental), whisk for flies, medicines, various and useful.

3.  The leaf is used for—­Thatch for houses, lining for houses, takapau (mats), baskets (fancy and plain), fans, palalafa (for sham fights), combs (very various), bedding (white fibre), tafi (brooms), Kubatse (used in printing), mama (candles), screen for bedroom, waiter’s tray.

Here are no less than forty-three uses of which we know something; and the natives know of others to which they can apply this single instance of the bounty of the God of nature.  For house and clothes, for food and medicine, the coco-nut palm is their sheet anchor, as well as their ornament and amusement, who dwell in the torrid zone.

This fine palm, which always forms a prominent feature in tropical scenery, is a native of Southern Asia.  It is spread by cultivation through almost all the intertropical regions of the Old and New Worlds; but it is cultivated nowhere so abundantly as in the Island of Ceylon, and those of Sumatra, Java, &c.  On the shores of the Red Sea it advances to Mokha, according to Niebuhr; but it does not succeed in Egypt.  It is cultivated in the lower and southern portions of the Asiatic Continent, as on the coasts of Coromandel and Malabar, and around Calcutta.  In the island of Ceylon, where the fruit of this tree forms one of the principal aliments of the natives, the nuts are produced in such quantities that in one year about three millions were exported, besides the manufactured produce in oil, &c.  According to Marshall it requires a mean temperature of 72 deg.  Its northern limit, therefore, is nearly the same as the southern limit of our cereals.